Gesture Volume: Edge Bar

Yes. It began as a way to save a worn-out volume rocker. Swipe the bar on the edge of the screen to change the volume, without pressing the physical buttons at all.

Yes. There are nine short videos, one for each part of the app, from setting it up to hiding the bar in chosen apps. Each runs for about a minute, and the tutorial page has every step written out under its video. They are on our YouTube channel too.

It does not ask for root. The only permission it requires is Display over other apps. The accessibility service, Notifications, Modify system settings, Do Not Disturb access and Phone are asked for only when you use a feature that needs them.

Yes. Assign Lock screen or Screenshot to a tap, a swipe or the long-press menu. Both use the optional accessibility service, which stays off until you turn it on in Settings › Accessibility.

Yes. Choose the apps where the bar should hide, and it gets out of the way when they are open; the optional accessibility service is what notices which app is open. A Quick Settings tile also hides or shows the bar.

Yes. The free version shows ads from AppLovin and partners, and Pro, a one-time purchase, removes them.

Yes. The source code is on GitHub, where bug reports and feature requests are welcome.

It is hidden while this app is open, so it never covers its own settings. Press home and it comes back. If it is still missing, check that the service is on — the big switch at the top of the home screen — and that the Permissions card is not asking for anything.

Press and hold it, wait for the buzz, then drag. It goes anywhere on the screen, and where you leave it is remembered separately for portrait and landscape. Which side it starts on can also be set under Appearance › Position.

Long press it and choose Hide handler. It stays away until you bring it back — from the notification, or from the card that appears on this app's home screen. Turning the service off entirely is the switch at the top of that screen.

Your phone is stopping the app in the background. This is common on Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Realme, Huawei and some Samsung devices, and it is not something an app can fix from the inside — battery optimisation has to be turned off for this app, and on some phones it also needs to be allowed to auto-start. Troubleshoot checks both and takes you to the right screen for your device.

Brightness needs the “Modify system settings” permission, which Android keeps separate from everything else. Grant it from the Permissions card. The app also turns adaptive brightness off the first time it writes a brightness value, because the light sensor would otherwise overwrite whatever you set within a second or two.

Only for the actions Android will not let an ordinary app perform: Back, Home, Recents, screenshot, lock screen, the notification shade and the power menu. Nothing else needs it, and the picker marks those actions so you know before you choose one. It is also used, only if you turn them on, for the Instant volume keys, hiding the bar in chosen apps, and showing the bar on the lock screen.

Mostly. Turn off “Notification controls” in Actions. Android requires a notification while the bar's service runs, so a silent placeholder stays, but it loses its status bar icon and moves to the bottom of the shade. You can hide it completely from the app's notification settings.

A track that grows out of the bar for setting brightness or volume. Swipe the bar up or down and it opens beside it, and the same swipe keeps setting the value. It stays on screen afterwards, so you can touch the track to correct an overshoot, and it closes itself once you are done. What it adjusts is set in Quick slider.

A panel that slides out beside the bar with your apps, shortcuts and small tools — search, a timer, a calculator, notes and media controls. Swipe the bar inward to open it, or assign “Open deck” to any other gesture.

The Quick panel is one slider for one value. The Deck is a whole panel of shortcuts and tools. They open on different gestures — up or down for the panel, inward for the Deck — so they cannot be confused with each other.

Actions. There are six slots — single tap, double tap, triple tap, long press, swipe in and swipe out — plus the two vertical swipes, and around forty actions to put in them. A slot set to None does nothing, which also makes the gestures around it quicker: a single tap fires immediately when nothing is bound to a double tap.

Holding the bar offers a small menu of actions as well as picking the bar up to move it — hold still for the menu, move to drag. You choose what is in it, what order it is in, and whether it is a grid or a list, from Long-press menu.

By default the bar follows whatever is playing — media, a call, an alarm or the ringer — which is usually what you want but can surprise you when nothing is playing. Actions › Volume stream lets you pin it to one specific stream instead.

Yes, and the bar remembers a separate position for each orientation, so it can sit somewhere sensible in both.

Very little. The bar is a small window that draws nothing until you touch it, and the app does no work in the background between gestures. Turning off battery optimisation, which Troubleshoot suggests, does not make it use more power — it only stops the system killing it.

Move it somewhere the app you are using does not need — long press and drag — or make it smaller and more transparent under Appearance. For a game you play often, hiding the bar from the long-press menu and bringing it back from the notification afterwards is the cleanest option.